This past week marked our fifth year participating in National School Choice Week.
Five years doesn’t sound like much — until you realize how much life can happen in between.
For the Malliard family, these five years hold everything: fear, growth, pride, grief, recovery, frustration, and resolve. School choice didn’t “save” our kids in some neat, inspirational way. What it did was give them room to grow — and it forced us, as parents, to stop hoping someone else would speak for them.
Year One: Watching Before Speaking
Our first year at the Capitol was overwhelming.
Tabby and I were the ones who spoke. Bella was there too — but she stayed at the top of the stairs. She wanted nothing to do with a microphone. She hid a little. Watched a lot. She didn’t have words yet, but she was learning what it looked like when parents decided to stand up anyway.
Year Two: Finding Her Voice
The second year, something shifted.
With encouragement from her parents and support from her school, Bella stepped forward. The same kid who hid the year before took the microphone and spoke — focused, steady, and confident. Even the staff noticed.
Watching your child find their voice is one of those moments that stays with you forever.
Bella’s first time speaking on the Capitol steps. One year earlier, she hid at the top of the stairs.
Year Three: All Four of Us
The third year is the one I never want to gloss over.
All four of us — me, Tabby, Bella, and Skyler — were there together. Healthy. Present. Standing in the Capitol before rehab, before strokes, before life split into “before” and “after.”
That day meant more to me than most people will ever know.
If you’ve ever seen me on video with a Pennsylvania flag behind me, that isn’t just any flag. That flag flew over the Capitol that day. Every time I see it, it warms my heart — and reminds me that the work didn’t stop there.
It still hasn’t.
All four of us. Before everything changed.
Year Four: Showing Up From Rehab
Then came the year everything looked different.
Bella was in rehab.
She couldn’t stand on the Capitol steps. Honestly, she couldn’t stand without assistance at all. There are two photos from that year — one of Bella in rehab, and one of me meeting with State Senator Scott Hutchinson.
What matters most isn’t what’s in the frame.
It’s what isn’t.
Bella missed being in Harrisburg — but she didn’t miss the work. From rehab, she handed out school choice bracelets and stickers to staff. She told them why school choice mattered to her.
After I got back from that solo trip, still in rehab, she said something I will never forget:
“Dad, I’m going to Harrisburg next year with you.”
Advocacy doesn’t stop just because life gets hard.
Carrying her voice when she couldn’t be there.
Year Five: The Doors Were Closed
This year — our fifth — the Capitol was closed.
A massive snowstorm canceled sessions. Everyone but us stayed home. After Tabby’s strokes, Bella’s recovery, no one would have blamed us for skipping it.
But Bella wanted to go.
So we went anyway.
We stood outside the Capitol. Took the picture. Let the world know that school choice still matters to us in Pennsylvania — even when the doors are closed, even when it’s cold, even when life has already taken more than it’s given.
The doors were closed. We showed up anyway.
Why Candy Apple Advocacy Exists
Candy Apple Advocacy exists because this work is messy. Political. Frustrating. Painful.
Tabby has always been the heart of our special education and IEP work — standing up for families who couldn’t or didn’t want to speak up. Even now, still recovering and not yet home, I know she’ll want to keep doing that work when she’s able.
Skyler doesn’t say much. But when he told me we made the right decision to change schools, that was enough. He graduated this spring. Quiet confirmation that the hard choices mattered.
I won’t pretend this year didn’t break me.
The budget fight hurt deeply. Watching education — and tens of thousands of students — treated like a political game left me questioning myself for days. Maybe longer. I wondered if I failed them. If my best wasn’t good enough.
People tell me I did everything I could. But when kids lose, “your best” doesn’t feel like much comfort.
That pain doesn’t disappear.
The Ask
But one thing hasn’t changed.
Every single morning, I wake up with the same objective:
Put my kids first. Put all kids first.
So here’s my ask — and I won’t soften it.
Join me.
Not by hoping my voice will save the day. It won’t. And it shouldn’t have to. You don’t have to go to Harrisburg. You don’t have to speak at a podium.
But you do have to show up.
That’s why we’re building Candy Apple Advocacy. That’s why we’re launched Movement Mondays — to help families take real, manageable action on their own journey. One email. One conversation. One step forward.
Hope is not a strategy. Families taking action together is.
Five years in, we’re still here. Still standing. Still showing up.
